About Time: An Aspect of Autobiography

by MORTIMER PENELOPE

Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Till Raether · Rating 5 out of 5]

TW: ableism, sexual and emotional abuse

The 1930s in small town England did not take place in the 20th century. Everything is Victorian and cruel. The utter heartlessness of it all boggles the mind, but Mortimer finds the perfect voice to neither belittle nor patronize her childhood self. Will reread soon.

[Pascale · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 10 short, brisk chapters Mortimer covers the first 2 decades of her life and ends, rather abruptly, on her twenty-first birthday in the middle of WWII. The second and last child of a mismatched couple, Penelope didn't have a particularly happy childhood, but feels sorrier for her brother Paul, who was sent to boarding school the minute she was born, than for herself. It wasn't clear to me how her parents made ends meet since her father, a muddle-headed bully who mildly abused her, had a difficult career as a preacher. On her mother's side the family was rather prosperous, with several uncles running successful businesses like a dairy farm and a rope manufacture. While Mortimer's descriptions of various eccentric relatives and schoolmistresses are unfailingly entertaining, I wish she had concentrated on her own development. How a provincial girl with her haphazard education turned into a sophisticated writer remains a bit of mystery.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea I suppose as others have rated it highly. Story of a young girl whose parents have a strange marriage at best. Chaotic, odd writing for autobiography.

[Stephen Curran · Rating 3 out of 5]

While beautifully composed, Penelope Mortimer’s straight-up account of her childhood suffers in comparison with her autobiographical fiction. Reading about the incidents and characters that made their way into her other work is interesting (her father, it turns out, was identical to the frustrated and abusive buffoon she wrote about in SUNDAY LUNCH WITH THE BROWNINGS) but it lacks the extraordinary sense of barely restrained panic. It’s very good, but the other stuff is better.

[Jodell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Id tell anyone just read "Pumpkin Eater". Skip the rest

[Avis Black · Rating 1 out of 5]

A truly bizarre memoir that is a solid wall of negativity and neuroticism as the author describes her low-oxytocin family. Mortimer (wife of John Mortimer, the author of the Rumpole books) write about an existence, but not a life. The prose is perfectly solid. It's just a book about a rotten life. Recommended if you have a taste for the sordid, but if not, not, and I don't blame you.